A Leading Actor, in His New Documentary, Confronts Wrongdoing by Bankman-Fried and Others in Crypto Space

Actor Ben McKenzie is best known for playing the character of Ryan Attwood in the Fox’s hit teen drama television show from a couple of decades ago, “The O.C.” But lately, given Mr. McKenzie’s investigative forays into cryptocurrency fraud, it seems he’s now more suited to the SEC than “The O.C.”Following the publication of his book, “Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud” in 2023, co-written with Jacob Silverman, Mr. McKenzie has now made an entertaining documentary digging into the murky world of digital assets entitled “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money.”The documentary, which is released today in New York and Los Angeles, is more lighthearted in tone than the book, though still one is left wondering why exactly Mr. McKenzie, 47, whose other credits include “Gotham” and “Southland,” is so taken with this subject as to apparently put his TV career to one side and decide to investigate the subject on the page and in film.His answer in his documentary is that the impact of cryptocurrency boils down to narrative: “It’s just a story, or rather millions of different stories spun by those invested in it…these stories spread like viruses. People get very excited, these bubbles build up very big, but then they collapse very swiftly.”To Mr. McKenzie’s credit, in the documentary, most of which was filmed in 2022, he proves prescient at interviewing the leading crypto rogue actors before their fall from grace. In “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money,” he tracks down Alex Mashinsky, the founder of defunct cryptocurrency platform Celsisus, who was subsequently sentenced to 12 years in prison for committing commodities and securities fraud.Then there’s Sam Bankman-Fried. Mr. McKenzie conducts an interview with the disgraced FTX crypto mogul, again prior to his public downfall, in which Mr. Bankman-Fried says, “I think we’ve seen all the major carnage in the crypto industry already. I think things are on abit of a recovery path from here.” Mr. Bankman-Fried is now serving a 25 year prison sentence at FCI Terminal Island in San Pedro, California.Mr. Bankman-Fried visibly squirms when Mr. McKenzie asks him about his political donations. Reflecting back on the interview at a post-screening talk at the IFC Center in Manhattan on Wednesday, Mr McKenzie said, “The answer he didn’t want to give me was $100 million….he was giving to Democrats outwardly and he was giving to Republicans via cutouts, his employees. He was playing both sides, as you would if you wanted to get things done in Washington.” Mr. McKenzie added that while Mr. Bankman-Fried, was not found guilty of making unlawful political contributions, a former employee at FTX, Ryan Salame, was sentenced to 90 months in prison for the same offense. Of course exposés on Bitcoin are nothing new. But what makes Mr. McKenzie’s effort commendable is that he happens to be a reliable witness. He’s not a Bitcoin shill, nor is he practising the double standards of the Financial Times whose journalists regularly chastise cryptocurrency at the same time as their employer makes money from regularly holding conferences devoted the subject, akin to a group of committed aetheists holding their meetings at the local church.Ben McKenzie in ‘Everyone Is Lying to You for Money.’ The ForgeMr. McKenzie added in his IFC talk that matters have deteroriated in the three years since he shot his documentary: “It has gotten worse since the events in the film…unfortunately the problem now is that even if you aren’t invested in crypto, crypto has worked its way so far into our financial system that it could affect us all. If there’s another downturn and crypto crashes again, which it has repeatedly, this is all tied into our banking system.”“It’s [in] everything, from Russian oligarchs selling sanctioned oil to the Chinese in exchange for drones they send to Ukraine,” he added. “It’s North Korean crypto hackers stealing a ton of crypto that has funded half of the North Korean weapons programme. It’s laundering money for South American drug cartels, Chinese triads, ISIS. The best people! Right now the Iranians are taking payment in crypto for ships to the Strait of Hormuz because they’re shut out of the banking system.”While the documentary features extensive footage of Mr. McKenzie and his wife. “Deadpool” actress, Morena Baccarin, it is not afraid to poke fun at Hollywood’s promotional embrace of cryptocurrency. Mr. McKenzie interviews the actor Gerard Butler, with whom his wife is shooting a film, who claims he “made a ton of money” investing in cryptocurrency, while adding he did not “actually know anything about it.” A running target for Mr. McKenzie in the film — also cited in his book — is the actor Matt Damon who appeared in a hyperbolic 2021 commercial for Crypto.com, entitled “Fortune Favors the Brave.”“My solution is to restrict the advertising, just like we do for cigarettes and hard alcohol,” Mr. McKenzie said at the IFC Center. “Instead, unfortunately, the leagues are in on the sports gambling and the prediction markets….we’re kind of like force feeding these young guys this thing, it’s like bet on this. It’s Matt Damon being, ‘What are you a pussy? Buy crypto!’ It’s just wrong and we shouldn’t do it.”‘Easy Money’ by Ben McKenzie. Abrams BooksIn contrast to so many high-profile actors, Mr. McKenzie manages to do a decent job of keeping it real. One highlight in the documentary is an apparently spontaneous conversation about cryptocurrency he has on the London Underground with a character we only know as “Scott the scaffolder” who recognizes him from his television appearances. While Mr. McKenzie doesn’t hide his objections to President Trump’s actions and pardons related to the cryptocurrency sphere, unlike many in Hollywood, political posturing is not at the forefront of his agenda. When his interviewer at the IFC, journalist Noah Shachtman, asked him about the White House ties to digital assets, Mr. McKenzie refused to take the bait: “I guess I’m not as familiar with [Steve] Witkoff and World Liberty Financial which is Trump’s corporation and which issues his coins.”The film was shot in Miami, London, El Salvador, Austin, and New York, yet Mr. McKenzie confessed it was made on a shoestring. “A bunch of different people shot this movie for me because it was shot in different places all over the world,” he said. “I can’t afford to fly anybody anywhere and it was tricky…we figured it out as we went along.” Mr. McKenzie had previously directed episodes of “Gotham,” the Batman prequel TV series that was broadcast on Fox between 2014 and 2019. “On TV you have all of the money and none of the time,” Mr. McKenzie said. “In doc [documentary] filmmaking you have all the time and not the money!”Refreshingly even though Mr. McKenzie wound up testifying to a Senate Banking Committee hearing on cryptocurrency and the collapse of FTX, he is under no illusions about the outcomes of his investigations into crypto criminality. “I feel I was as right as I hoped I would be or more and yet I had less of an effect,” he says in “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money.” “I felt it would be like a movie and it would just disappear….people are still going to believe in crypto no matter what I say. It doesn’t matter what anyone says.”“I’m doing what I can to spread the word about what I see,” Mr. McKenzie said at the IFC Center. “You can take it or leave it.”

A Leading Actor, in His New Documentary, Confronts Wrongdoing by Bankman-Fried and Others in Crypto Space

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